William S. Dietrich II

William S. Dietrich II (May 13, 1938 – October 6, 2011) was a successful industrialist who took over and expanded Dietrich Industries, a steel framing manufacturer which he eventually sold to Worthington Industries. Late in life, he made two of the largest charitable contributions in higher education history, to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Dietrich rose from salesman to president and eventually chairman and CEO and Dietrich Industries eventually grew into the United States' largest manufacture of light-metal framing for the construction industry with more than 1,800 employees at 19 plants in 17 different states. He sold Dietrich Industries in 1996 and used the proceeds to fund a charitable trust, which grew substantially from investments and from which he made his future gifts.

At the age of 40, while running his family's company, Dietrich entered the University of Pittsburgh's graduate program in political science, earning a master's degree in 1980 in and his PhD in 1984.

Dietrich served on the University of Pittsburgh's board of trustees, serving as chairman from 2001 to 2003, as well as the boards of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, the Greater Pittsburgh Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the Pittsburgh Symphony Society, the Pittsburgh Ballet, the Southwest Pennsylvania Growth Alliance, and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. In honor of the gift, Carnegie Mellon renamed the university's College of Humanities and Social Sciences to the Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences after Dietrich's mother.

Later that month, on September 22, 2011, the University of Pittsburgh, where Dietrich has earned two degrees and served on the board of trustees, announced it had received a $125 million gift from Dietrich. The gift was also the largest Pitt had received up until that time and 10th largest private gift to public higher education in the United States.

Writing Dietrich also was the author of two books: In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline, published in 1991, and Eminent Pittsburghers: Profiles of the City’s Founding Industrialists, a collection of biographical essays originally published in the Pittsburgh Quarterly but assembled into a book published in 2011. At his death, he was in the process of writing a third book, to which he had given the title American Recessional: The U.S. Decline and the Rise of China.